Animal Scientism: Making Biology Experimental in Republican China

Abstract

This essay follows animals from the animal house through the laboratory to their representation as abstracted knowledge circulating the world to trace the emergence of experimental biology in Republican China. Experimental biology was promoted and institutionalized by the Chinese Physiological Society, which British-Chinese experimental physiologist Robert Lim established in 1926, at a time when descriptive taxonomy and morphology were dominant. Proponents argued that experimental research on live animals was more advanced than the collection and observation of specimens, and that experimentation, rather than description, now undergirded international science. In championing experimentalism, they were not only trying to shift the focus of Chinese biology from description to experiment, but also revising the scientism by then entrenched in Republican China. They put forth a scientism of experiment: cultivating experimental biology would help China catch up more quickly to imperial powers. Animals, as the material basis for experimental biology, came to signify the science that they produced; the Buddhist-aligned Chinese Animal Protection Society, established in 1932, chose not to protest animal experimentation in part due to the association between animals and modern experimentalism. In Republican China, animals were thus material and cultural objects that made and embodied a new scientism of experiment.